FLAL Digital Classroom is like having your own personal instructor guiding you through each lesson while you work at your own speed. This book includes 15 self-paced lessons that let you discover essential skills and explore the new features and capabilities of Flash Professional. Each lesson includes step-by-step instructions and lesson files, along with video tutorials that complement the topics covered in each lesson. These accompanying files are provided on the included Flash Professional Digital Classroom DVD, developed by the same team of Flash experts who have created many of the official training titles for Adobe Systems. Each tutorial is approximately five minutes long and demonstrates and explains the concepts and features covered in the lesson. This training package demonstrates the basics of using the program, such as using layers and instances to build animation sequences, as well as intermediate and advanced features, such as using ActionScript to create interactive Web page components. Jam-packed with information, this book takes users from the basics through intermediate level topics and helps readers find the information they need in a clear, approachable manner.

Fred Gerantabee is an award winning interactive designer, web developer and author based in New York City. The AGI Creative Team develops and delivers training programs for creative, marketing, and communications professionals through the American Graphics Institute. AGI's expert instructors have developed many of Adobe's official training books as well as technical training programs for Adobe's employees.

About Flash Digital Classroom 1

Prerequisites 1

System requirements 1

Starting Adobe Flash Professional CS6 3

Resetting the Flash workspace 3

Loading lesson files 4

Working with the video tutorials 5

Setting up for viewing the video tutorials 5

Viewing the video tutorials with the Adobe Flash Player 5

Hosting Your Flash content and websites 6

Additional resources 7

Lesson 1: Flash CS6 Jumpstart Starting up 9

What is Flash? 10

About Flash Player 12

Flash file types 13

Creating a new document 14

Setting up your new document 15

Saving your Flash document 17

Opening documents 18

The Flash workspace 19

The Stage and work area 19

The Flash Tools panel 21

The Property Inspector 23

Panels and panel groups 28

The Timeline 30

Practicing with the Flash tools 33

The drawing and selection tools in action 33

Using gradient and color tools 38

Animation in action 40

Getting help 42

Support forums 43

Moving forward 43

Self study 44

Review 44

Lesson 2: Getting Started with the Drawing Tools Starting up 45

Drawing in Flash 46

Using the Merge Drawing mode 46

Creating artwork in Merged Drawing mode 47

Working with Drawing Objects 49

Putting it all together 52

Using the Line tool 54

Using the Pen tool 57

Using the Add and Delete Anchor Point tools 59

Using the Combine Objects menu 61

Using the Primitive tools (Smart Shapes) 64

Using the Oval Primitive tool 64

The Rectangle Primitive tool 66

Adding text to your artwork 69

Flash Text: TLF & Classic Text 69

Working with Threaded and Multi-Column Text 72

Adding filters 74

Working with colors 75

Getting set up 75

Creating gradients 76

Using opacity with gradient colors 79

Creating custom colors 80

Saving a custom color set 80

Organizing and layering graphics 81

Working with layers 81

Arranging, locking, and hiding layers 83

Creating layer folders 84

Transforming graphics 86

The Transform menu and Free Transform tool 86

The Transform panel 88

Transforming gradients 90

Self study 92

Review 92

Lesson 3: Using Symbols and the Library Starting up 93

What are symbols? 94

A look at the Library panel 95

Creating symbols 98

Converting a graphic to a symbol 98

Creating blank symbols 102

Building artwork with symbol instances 104

Positioning and snapping in symbol instances 104

Editing and duplicating symbols 106

Editing symbols in place 109

Modifying individual symbol instances 110

Modifying instance color 112

Fine-tuning your background 113

Duplicating symbols 116

Adding graphics and text to your banner 117

Swapping symbols 120

Managing the Library 124

Organizing symbols with folders 124

The Move To command 126

Deleting items from the library 127

Controlling library views 129

Wrapping up 129

Self study 130

Review 130

Lesson 4: Advanced Tools Starting up 131

Working with gradients 132

Adjusting gradients with the Gradient Transform tool 135

Flash CS6 tools for advanced drawing 137

Spraying symbols 137

Masking 139

Introducing the Deco tool 141

Advanced Deco tool techniques 144

The Deco Tool’s new options 148

Introduction to IK tools 148

Self study 150

Review 150

Lesson 5: Creating Basic Animation Starting up 151

Introducing keyframes and the Timeline 152

Layers 152

Frames and keyframes 152

Building animation: Enter the tween 156

Tween layers and automatic keyframing 156

Tweening multiple objects 160

Previewing animation with Test Movie 161

Moving and transforming tween paths 162

Incorporating color effects and scaling 164

Introducing the Motion Editor 165

Modifying the animation using the Motion Editor 166

Tweening rotation 170

Controlling animation paths 172

Where did Motion Guide layers go? 173

What happens to my existing Flash files that use Motion Guide layers? 174

How do I create a motion guide if I still want to? 174

Morphing graphics and colors with shape tweens 174

Shape tween basics 174

Legacy techniques: Creating classic tweens 178

Classic tween rules 180

Adding color effects and scaling to a classic tween 181

(Re)creating motion guides for classic tweens 182

Troubleshooting Motion Guides 184

Adjusting animation with onion skinning 185

Looking ahead 187

Self study 187

Review 187

Lesson 6: Advanced Animation Starting up 189

Copying, pasting, and saving animation 190

Using Copy and Paste Motion 190

Creating Motion Presets 193

Applying Advanced Easing Behavior 196

Animating Masks 199

Creating Animation with IK Poses 202

Sequencing Animation 204

Shifting, Moving, and Extending Tween Spans 204

Rendering and Animating in 3D 206

The 3D Rotation tool 206

The 3D Translation tool 206

Fine-Tuning tweens with the Motion Editor 210

Adding shape tweens and shape hints 212

Creating Shape Hints 214

Self study 217

Review 217

Lesson 7: Customizing Your Workflow Starting up 219

Customizing workspace layouts 220

Opening the completed file 220

Working with panels 221

Collapsing and storing panels 224

Managing workspaces 226

Setting preferences 228

Keyboard shortcuts 231

Visual aids for alignment 235

Rulers and guides 235

Guide layers 239

Advanced alignment 244

Refining your aligned objects 247

Self study 249

Review 249

Lesson 8: Working with Imported Files Starting up 251

Import formats 252

Importing still images 253

Viewing the completed lesson file 253

Import a bitmap image 254

Adding text 257

Swapping out an imported file 261

Modifying imported artwork 262

Updating imported files 265

Importing Photoshop files 266

Importing a layered Photoshop file 266

Importing Illustrator artwork 273

Animating the bat 277

Self study 280

Review 280

Lesson 9: Introducing ActionScript Starting up 281

Exploring the lesson file 282

What is ActionScript? 283

Which version of ActionScript should you use? 283

Where Do I Place ActionScript? 284

The Code Snippets Panel 284

An important note about Publish settings 284

The Actions panel at work 285

Standard (default) script editing mode 286

Using Script Assist 286

Adding and removing actions 287

Adding actions to frames with the Code Snippets Panel 287

Adding a stop() action 287

Placing a goto action using the Actions Panel 290

Controlling Movie Clip Timelines 292

Functions 294

Wrapping up 298

Self study 298

Review 298

Lesson 10: Creating Navigation Controls Starting up 299

Working with button symbols 300

Building buttons 302

Adding text to a button 306

Duplicating and modifying buttons 308

Creating text-based buttons 310

Creating frame labels for ActionScript 313

Adding ActionScript: Events and event handlers 315

Understanding events 315

Responding to events with event handlers 315

Tying it all together with event listeners 316

Linking buttons to specific frames 316

Adding an event listener to a button 319

Linking buttons to a website 322

Introducing navigateToURL() and URLRequest()322

Self study 325

Review 325

Lesson 11: Adding Sound to Your Movies Starting up 327

Preparing sound files for Flash 328

Sample rate and bit depth 329

Editing your audio 330

Mono or stereo 331

Audio file formats 331

Importing sounds 332

Placing sounds on the Timeline 334

Adding sound to your slide show project 335

Adding the remaining narration 337

Adding sound effects to buttons 339

Placing Event sounds on button frames 339

Editing sounds 341

Trimming sound 343

Controlling sounds 347

Repeating and looping sounds 347

Looping sounds 348

Introducing the SoundMixer and stopAll() 349

More sync menu controls: stop and start 352

Start sounds 352

Stop sounds 353

Sound publishing options 355

Wrapping up 356

Self study 357

Review 357

Lesson 12: Introducing Movie Clips Starting up 359

About movie clips 360

Creating movie clips 360

Laying the foundation: Your first movie clip 360

Previewing movie clip animation from the main Timeline 363

Creating the landing gear 365

Combining movie clips and main Timeline animation 367

Nesting movie clips 368

Adding ActionScript to movie clip Timelines 371

Controlling movie clip playback 371

Adding some variation to the propellers 373

Tweening movie clips 376

Adding a second tween 378

Combining movie clips for complex animation 378

Adding filter effects to movie clips 381

Using the Filters panel 381

Creating a filter effect 382

Wrapping up 385

Self study 386

Review 386

Lesson 13: Working with Video Starting up 387

Video in Flash: formats and fundamentals 388

Understanding video 389

Embedded versus linked video 389

Flash Video formats: FLV and F4V 390

Understanding codecs 390

Understanding Adobe Media Encoder CS6 391

Converting video with the Adobe Media Encoder 392

Working with embedded video 393

Adding embedded video to the Timeline 394

Building controls for embedded video 397

The Bandwidth Profiler 400

Working with linked video 401

Adding cue points in the Adobe Media Encoder 402

Adding linked video to the Timeline 405

Live Preview 405

Adding Cue Points in the Property Inspector 407

Working with the FLVPlayback component 408

Self study 410

Review 410

Lesson 14: Delivering Your Final Movie Starting up 411

The publishing process 412

Publishing to the Web 412

Customizing the Publish settings 413

Publishing for the Desktop with Adobe AIR 419

About Digital Certificates 424

Installing Your New AIR Application 424

Publishing for Mobile Devices 426

Publishing for iOS 426

Publishing for Android OS 428

Using Export Movie 431

New: Export PNG Sequence 432

An overview of FTP 435

Self study 436

Review 436

Lesson 15: What’s New in Adobe Flash CS6? Starting up 437

Expanded Publishing and Support for iOS and Android Devices 438

A little ruler goes a long way: Integrated Ruler on TLF text boxes 439

New AIR and Mobile Code Snippets 439

Convenience Features: Auto-Save and File Recovery plus Scale Content with Stage 440

PNG Sequence Export 442

Bitmap Editing with Adobe Photoshop CS6 442

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